Is a Messy Desk Bad?

Take a look at your desk: perhaps there are a couple of half-finished bags of chips stashed into the side drawers; last year’s end-of-year budget report sprawled over the keyboard; a lingering months-old Christmas card from your accountant (you keep it to remind yourself that she cares); and an explosion of various and sundry papers fresh out of the printer (you’re going paperless any day now, really).

You know full well it’s chaos incarnate and your neat and tidy coworkers are quietly horrified — yet recent research may surprise: that messy desk of yours is weirdly making you more internally organized and more likely to reach your goals.

“But how can it be?” you ask from beneath the mounds of disorganized travail in front of you.